We are a grass roots organization located in both Israel and the United States. Our intention is to be pro-active on behalf of Israel. This means we will identify the topics that need examination, analysis and promotion. Our intention is to write accurately what is going on here in Israel rather than react to the anti-Israel media pieces that comprise most of today's media outlets.

Russia's S-300 missile system could dramatically change the stakes in
the Syrian conflict if it is sent to Damascus, which Russia has signed a
contract to do. RFE/RL lays out five things to know about the
air-defense system.

What are the capabilities of the S-300 system?
The S-300 missile system is designed to shoot down aircraft and
missiles at a range of 5-to-150 kilometers. That gives it the ability to
destroy not only attackers in Syrian airspace but also any attackers
inside Israel.

It can track and strike multiple targets simultaneously at altitudes ranging from 10 meters to 27,000 meters.

Richard
Allen of JCC Watch said, "There has been a pattern - first with [BDS
activist] Roger Waters and now with Alice Walker. All of our efforts to
speak with the 92nd Street Y administrators have been met with closed
doors, closed ears and closed minds."

Friday, May 31, 2013

Following months of
academic discussions on whether a third intifada has erupted or not, the time
has come for an operational debate on the issue, which will probably conclude
that while a third intifada has not been launched, we are in the midst of a
pre-intifada period.Our hostile neighbors
are once again investing overtime hours in their old ballistic habits. All day
long they throw stones at Israeli vehicles travelling in the West Bank and
east Jerusalem, and hurl Molotov cocktails with the frequency in which
fireworks light up the sky on Independence Day.

One of the more clever methods of anti-Semitism is to claim that Israel’s
sole mission is to be a refuge for Jews after the Holocaust, thereby asserting
that the land of Israel isn’t Jewish land, said Bennett.

“Part of the truth is that this land, where we are right now – Jerusalem and Israel – is the land of
the Jewish people,” he declared. “It’s so very simple: Israel belongs to the
Jews. Period. It’s not a compensation for the Holocaust. Israel is the Jewish State. We
have to say that again and
again.”

He added, “Friends should absolutely criticize us, which is fine. We’re far
from perfect. No one’s perfect, but we’re trying to strengthen the only pillar
of democracy in an ocean of radical Islam which is out to wipe out the world.
We’re here fighting. It’s not
easy, but we’re doing it. We’re doing it and we’re creating start-ups. We’re
trying to do good. We don’t always succeed, but we try.”

“We’re doing our best and we’re going to continue doing our best, but we need
you guys to go out and tell people the truth, and the truth is that Israel is
the land of the Jews and we’re here to stay, and we’re not going to be silent
anymore,” said Bennett.

The good news is that Bethlehem has its first female mayor.
But the bad news is that Mayor Vera Baboun, elected in October 2012,
has since been facing a smear campaign that reached it peak last week
when assailants damaged her private vehicle.
The assault on the mayor's car serves as a reminder of the ongoing
tensions between the Christian minority and Muslim majority of
Bethlehem. It also highlights the huge challenges facing Palestinian
women in a conservative society.

Water from the
Mediterranean Sea rushes through pipes en route to being filtered for
use across Israel in a process called desalination, which could soon
account for 80 percent of the country's potable water. (photo credit:
Ben Sales/JTA)

PALMACHIM,
Israel (JTA) – As construction workers pass through sandy corridors
between huge rectangular buildings at this desalination plant on
Israel’s southern coastline, the sound of rushing water resonates from
behind a concrete wall.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Ah that I were a mind
reader. But, alas, I am not. So I garner as much information as I
can, and rely on my analysis and my intuition. Sometimes that's not
enough.

Last time I wrote, I alluded
to a statement by Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud), who
had criticized Peres' eagerness for that "two state solution"
and his fawning over Abbas. Peres doesn't speak for the government,
he said, and, "every declaration of this sort, certainly on the eve
of negotiations, does not help Israel's
stance."

I caught that "on the eve of
negotiations," and pointed it out with some unease, but with no certainty
about what he was saying.

"Equality of the
burden" is the latest buzz phrase in Israel. Yet since the establishment
of the state, there has never been equality of the burden in Israel.
During the most difficult days of Israel's War of Independence, the sons
of the rich went abroad to study law at British universities, and later
returned to Israel to teach the concepts of equality and democracy.

During that same
period, others sat in cafes on Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street and, in the
midst of their alcohol consumption, analyzed the war's progress on
napkins. These were the same people who in later years told us that the
IDF is an occupation army, that Meir Har-Zion and the fighters from 101
Unit were hotheads, and that settlers are an obstruction to peace.
Throughout Jewish history there have always been small groups of people
who carried the burden of the nation on their backs without feeling like
suckers.

Earlier this month, Palestinian Media Watch
reported on a ceremony in the Palestinian Authority celebrating the
International Red Cross' 150th anniversary. The official PA daily
reported that the International Red Cross (ICRC) together with the
Palestinian Red Crescent planted 150 trees bearing the names of "veteran prisoners," meaning security prisoners who have been imprisoned for many years.

Following
PMW's report, the International Red Cross, in a letter to Weekly Press
Pakistan - Canada that published the report, denied its involvement in
the ceremony:

"Please note that ICRC was not present during the planting of the trees ceremony reported by your website."

In my spare moments, which are few and far between, I have often
imagined what the ideal socialist-communist utopia envisioned by
Progressives and their ilk would be like and how it would function.

Over the years I have read various collectivist utopian novels,
particularly those that envisioned ideal communist or socialist
societies, and dismissed them as unrealistic fables whose authors had an
agenda other than projecting their politics, short-changing their
readers on the political and economic facets and means of their tales.
Among many such novels, Edward Bellamy's talky Looking Backward: 2000-1887,
published in 1888, was the best of a literally unbelievable lot. The
most significant and ominous thing about Bellamy's novel is that for
many years it was a best-seller, trailing behind Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur. It helped to popularize socialism in the U.S.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

On May 21, in an act of sheer barbarism,
obscene even by Islamist standards, two Muslims armed with knives and
machetes brazenly hacked to death and nearly beheaded British soldier
Lee Rigby on a London street in Woolwich in broad daylight. The
attackers yelled Allahu akbar – God is Great – a common Islamist
war chant, while engaging in their orgy of depravity. A passerby
videotaped the culprits, one of whom seemed pleased by his deed and
offered a host of Islamist-inspired explanations justifying his actions.
His hands were visibly stained with the blood of the slain trooper.

Ted Belman
I attended an all day conference in Tel Aviv today entitled The Arab Peace Initiative (API) – Current Status
backed by the S Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Studies and
highlighting the Israel Peace Initiative (IPI). As you can imagine
there were a lot of lefties there.
The IPI supports “the establishment of a Palestinian state on the
West Bank and Gazaon the basis of the ’67 lines and territorial swaps
on a 1:1 basis in limited scope.” The state will be “demilitarized with
strict security measures on its borders.” And of course, Jerusalem to
be divided and refugees to return only to Palestinian state with
symbolic and agreed exceptions”

Monday, May 27, 2013

Night after night last week, as the tumult in
Stockholm not only continued but kept spreading to more and more
neighborhoods and then to other Swedish cities, the media in that
country, by and large, kept pretending that it was all about things like
unemployment and social marginality, all of which were supposedly
aggravated by Swedish racism (and, especially, by the insufficiently
respectful attitude of police officers toward immigrant “youths”);
meanwhile, the foreign media, which, as the disorder persisted, found it
increasingly difficult to pretend that all this wasn’t happening (the New York Times finally ran a four-sentence Reuters item about the bedlam on Thursday), largely echoed the domestic disinformation.

Author’s note: This was originally
published in Dec. 2011 in Front Page Magazine and it was the most
popular piece I’ve written until this piece of mine.
I’m a cartoonist, so the only essays I write are ones that I cannot
express in any other way but words, and here- in light of the latest
Jihad attack in London, and the latest “Islam vs “Islamism”” debate
going on- is what I think is my most comprehensive piece on Islam,
Muslims & Jihad.
My name is Bosch and I’m a recovered Muslim.
That is, if Muslims don’t kill me for leaving Islam, which it
requires them to do. That’s just one of the reasons I’ve been writing
and drawing against Islam and its Jihad for a number of years now. But
fortunately for us, Islam hasn’t been able to make every Muslim its
slave, just as Nazism wasn’t able to turn every German into a Nazi. So
there is Islam and there are Muslims. Muslims who take Islam seriously
are at war with us and Muslims who don’t aren’t.

Europe has many fine traditions. Its newest tradition is the burning
car. Why burn cars? Because, as George Mallory once said of mountains,
they're there. There are lots of car around and if you're a member of a
perpetually unemployed tribe that wandered up north and forages on
social services, you might as well do something to pass the time.

Burning houses is a lot of work and house fires spread. Car fires are simpler. In a welfare state
everyone has houses but not everyone has cars. Burning cars is a way to
stick it to those who work for a living. It's also a way to drive off
the members of the sickly Swedish tribe and claim the area for your own.
And it's also fun.

Either you have a plan for buying a car or for burning a car.
Considering the Muslim unemployment rates in Sweden, France and
everywhere else, it's safe to say the car burners don't have future
plans that involve saving up for a car or taking out a loan for a car or
finding work. Cars are things that they steal, either the usual way or
by defrauding social services. They might get a car by dealing drugs,
but those cars are disposable. One day they'll have to burn them anyway.

If you're the product of an industrialized culture, then you think of a
car as a product of work. You realize that it's the product of countless
raw materials, that the metals had to be dug out of the earth, that the
machines that make it had to be assembled and that men had to stand
around putting that into place. And you might be one of those men. And
if you aren't, then you might know someone who is.

Intelligence
information indicates a rise in European Muslims travelling to Syria to
join Islamic groups fighting the Assad regime.

Western leaders are concerned about the increasing
amount of European Muslims who are fighting in Syria for ideological
reasons. Since the fall of 2012, intelligence information indicates a
rise in European Muslims travelling to Syria in order to join Islamic
groups fighting the Assad regime. Hundreds of Muslims from the United
Kingdom, Ireland, France and Belgium, among other places, are reported
to have left for Syria over the last year. In the Netherlands, the
amount has increased from a few dozen a couple of months ago, to at
least one hundred in April 2013.

In March 2013, video footage
appeared of Dutch-speaking Islamist fighters active in Syria. About a
hundred Dutch jihadists are said to have joined radical combat groups
such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which they themselves refer to as ‘an Islamic
resistance army.’ Their objective in travelling to Syria is to help
“their brothers and sisters” in their struggle against the Assad regime.
Among them are boys and girls in their twenties, especially but not
exclusively from the cities of Delft, the Hague and Rotterdam. So far,
at least two Dutchmen have been killed in Syria, the 21-year old Mourad
and the 20-year old Soufian.

Several prominent
Israelis have expressed their preference for a victory by Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war in Syria. This approach is
mistaken, for both moral and strategic reasons.

First, siding with a
dictator who butchers his own people and even uses chemical weapons in
order to stay in power is morally disgusting. At the normative level,
Assad's brutal dictatorship is not an acceptable preference for a
democratic state like Israel, even if the alternatives to Assad are not
very enticing (the Syrian opposition includes radical Sunni elements,
such as al-Qaida, that have not displayed great sensitivity to human
rights either). In the real world, there is sometimes a tacit necessity
to tolerate a dictatorship for a variety of reasons, but explicit
support for it is a moral embarrassment.

Second, Israeli
statements that favor one side or another in the domestic struggles
within Arab entities are always a mixed blessing. Nobody in the Arab
world wants to be "tainted" by an association with the Jewish state.
While links with Israel could be very useful, explicit closeness to
Israel has an undesirable delegitimizing effect. Even if Israel has its
favorites, Israeli leaders should keep their mouths shut.

The proposals are being
attacked from two primary directions. One is from the haredi
(ultra-Orthodox) population, which vehemently opposes the proposed
reforms aimed at altering the status quo, which it finds amenable. The
other side opposes what it calls the overly compromising nature of the
proposals. What kind of burden equality can there be, they argue, when
enlistment for haredi men is postponed until they turn 21, and when
1,800 yeshiva students will be given exemptions every year?

I won't deal here with
the criticism voiced by the haredim. Basically, I view draft dodging as
an immoral act, which undermines the foundations of Jewish solidarity,
contradicts the fundamental Jewish principle of vouching for your fellow
man, and runs counter to the obligation we all have to do our part in
our righteous war to be here. And what can be considered more of a
"righteous war" than the struggle for the Jewish state's existence and
for the peace and security of its citizens, a struggle that has
continued since the creation of the state and for which more than 25,000
people have sacrificed their lives?

Caroline Glick & Mark Levin: The Israeli Solution -- A One-State Pla

Why Israel Opposes International Forces in the Jordan Valley

U.S. scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel

Yet another indication of the absolute corruption of American academia today. "US scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel," from the Jerusalem Post, December 16: NEW YORK – The 5,000-member American Studies Association (ASA), which describes itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to...http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/us-scholars-group-votes-in-favor-of-academic-boycott-of-israel.html

Israel Living Prophecy

A senior New Israel Fund officer told a U.S. official in 2010 that the disappearance of the Jewish state would not be a tragedy, according to a document that was leaked by Wikileaks...She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.

Mideast expert Michael Widlanski: Fatah is a joke

US-Israeli talks focus on Ahmadinejad's possible ouster

How to exploit the deep cracks forming in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration for removing the Iranian president was a top item on the agenda of the high-level talks between Barack Obama's advisers and Israeli officials at Mossad headquarters in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, Wednesday, July 29.

DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report that Ahmadinejad's cabinet is falling apart; of his original lineup of 21 ministers, only nine remain at their posts.

The Identity Of The Land

Why the Palestinians need to recognize the Jewish State

We do NOT support a 2-state solution

A January 2009 poll found that Americans oppose creating a Palestinian state by 45-31 percent. A February 2009 Maagar Mohot Survey Institute poll has also shown that Israelis oppose creating a Palestinian state by 51-32 percent.

Many other polls tell a similar story.

These figures suggest that Americans and Israelis have understood that creating a Palestinian state under current conditions will not bring peace but merely another terror state.

Netanya,Israel

Jerusalem At Night

Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

Children of Hamas

Picture of Hamas children the media does not show you

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250. Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Hamas teaching the children of Gaza

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009] Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917Dear Lord Rothschild,I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate theachievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities inPalestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,Arthur James Balfour[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Favorite Books

While Europe Slept

About Me

Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel;divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups;Chana, resident of Jerusalem, JCPA member

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.

Information worth Possessing

"Israel gave the Palestinians an autonomy in 42% of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords in the early 90's. Over 92% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza were then under the administration of the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman Yasser Arafat.

"Israel is surrounded by 10 hostile Arab countries who do not even recognize its right to exist ( Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, Morocco, Tunisia, Aden) and Iran"